Older Than They Think/Literature: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

* The phrase "standing on the shoulders of giants" was famously used by Newton to Hooke (1676): ''"What Descartes did was a good step. You have added much several ways, and especially in taking the colours of thin plates into philosophical consideration. If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants."'', but actually it dates back to the 12 century, when John of Salisbury wrote

** The character was originally introduced as Cohen the Barbarian, quite possibly a play-on of ''[[Conan the Barbarian]]''.

** Some fans thought that Inigo Skimmer of ''The Fifth Elephant'' was a reference to/parody of Inigo Montoya of ''[[The Princess Bride (novel)|The Princess Bride]]'', as both are [[Career Killers]]. Pratchett corrected this, pointing out that Inigo is an old name and that if he was thinking of anyone, he probably got the name from [[wikipedia:Inigo Jones|Inigo Jones]].

* Film novelizations have existed [[The Master Mystery|since the 1920s]].

** And novelizations of plays go back still further.

** Indeed, Holmes is heard at one point to belittle the Dupin stories, presumably as a backhanded homage to Poe by Arthur Conan Doyle.

** Some believe Poe could have been inspired by [[Voltaire]]'s ''Zadig'' (1747), who does detective-like work.

* Gibson himself almost had this writ large; while writing ''[[Neuromancer]]'', he went to see ''[[Blade Runner]]'' and was in tears by the end, because there was his entire milieu, on screen and before he was even done! He was very relieved when the movie tanked...

* The [[Beam Me Up, Scotty]] trope page once claimed that "All that glitters is not gold" is a misquote of Shakespeare's ''The Merchant of Venice'', which has the line "All that ''glisters'' is not gold." Actually, the line didn't originate with Shakespeare. Both Chaucer and Cervantes used variations on it. The first version using "glitters" appears in John Dryden's 1687 poem The Hind and the Panther. When Shakespeare wrote ''The Merchant of Venice'', the line was already a well-worn cliché (which is why the next line of the couplet is "often have you heard that told"), so there's no real reason his version should be considered authoritative.

* The first use of a ruined Statue of Liberty wasn't ''[[Planet of the Apes]]'', but the novel ''The Last American'' by John Ames Mitchell, published in 1889 -- only six years after the statue was complete.

* Some people think that the movie ''Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' ripped off the name "Babel Fish" from the [http://babelfish.altavista.com website].

*Aelfric's ''Colloquy on the Occupations'', a poem for Anglo-Saxon schoolboys has people from different occupations describing their jobs to a class. Sound familiar anyone?